November 29, 2003

It's been another brutal year on Cincinnati streets, with 2003's homicide
rate approaching the 66 killings that tied a 15-year high last year.
As of Friday, 61 people had been killed in Cincinnati.

Although drugs are at the root of many of the slayings, there have been
notable exceptions.

One of the most infamous is the death of 81-year-old Lavern Jansen, whose
killer followed her home from a neighborhood pharmacy and overpowered her in her Covedale home March 19. Police, who have yet to make an arrest in the
case, have not disclosed how she was killed.

"That's a very sad case," said Police Lt. Kim Frey, commander of the
homicide unit. "She's not out dealing drugs. She's not out standing on a
street corner. It's a horrible, horrible crime."

As disturbing as the particular circumstances of some of the slayings are,
the raw homicide statistics for Cincinnati are perhaps even more troubling.
In recent years, Cincinnati's homicide total has been substantially higher
than that of some much bigger cities typically thought to have worse crime
problems.

Rising crime isn't unique to Cincinnati, Mayor Charlie Luken countered. After several
years of decline throughout the 1990s, many cities are seeing more
homicides.

"There's evidence that this is a phenomenon," Luken said. "In Columbus,
they're approaching 100, but it's an unacceptable circumstance." (Columbus
last year had 129 homicides, roughly twice Cincinnati's total. With a
population of about 712,000, however, that city also is about twice
Cincinnati's size.)

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

Cincinnati's 66 homicides in 2002 compared unfavorably, for example, to the
47 homicides in 1.2-million population San Diego, the 58 killings in San
Francisco (population 791,000) and the 53 deaths in Denver (569,000
residents). The city's 2002 homicide total also was more than twice that of
San Jose (population 913,000), where there were 28 killings last year, and
the 26 homicides in Seattle (population 572,000).

With a population of 330,000, Cincinnati's 66 homicides in 2002 represented
20 killings per 100,000 residents, well above the 13.73 average for 32 major
U.S. cities analyzed in one study by a Washington public safety watchdog
group. That rate placed Cincinnati in some most unwelcome company, alongside
such cities as Chicago (22.2 homicides per 100,000 residents), Philadelphia
(19 per 100,000) and Los Angeles (17.5), according to FBI crime statistics.
The nation's "murder capital" last year was Washington, D.C., where the
city's 262 homicides equaled 45.8 per 100,000 residents.

"I'm very concerned about the homicide rate," said Pat DeWine, outgoing
chairman of council's law committee. "The city is not as safe as it should
be."

Throughout the just-completed council election, DeWine often cited one
statistic that he argued vividly made his point. In 1990, DeWine told
campaign audiences, a person was 2½ times more likely to become a homicide
statistic in New York than in Cincinnati. Last year, those numbers were
reversed, he said.

Click here to read the entire story in the Cincinnati Post.

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